The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Eric Raymond's essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" gives insights into the software development process. He argues for the effectiveness of the bazaar model of software development where the entire community can participate in the development of the software at every stage and new releases are made frequently. In the cathedral model the development process is restricted to a small group of developers and only made available to the public after each release. Clearly the bazaar model has the potential to turn out new releases faster and get more people involved in a project with a desire to work on it. Eric Raymond pointed out the importance of the social side of developing an open source project. The manager has to lead the development in the project and put everyone's contributions together. This seems like the obvious way to get quality software, but there are many challenges that keep the ideal development methods from being put into action. The biggest obstacles to quality software development are most likely to be getting people interested in working on your project and putting everything together to make the software do what you want it to.

Saturday Rides

Saturday I biked to Salt Lake City and back. I went by way of Suncrest Ridge up by the U and then to the City Library. There's this sweet hill at the end that made the whole trip worth it. There's not really a direct route through from Draper to SLC so I'm still trying to find one that I like. I really like my new bike. I just need to figure out how to raise the gear ratio on it some. The Shimano 8-speed internal hub is pretty nice, but not completely maintenance free. I couldn't get into the 8th gear on the way back because I needed pliers to tighten the shifter. When I got back I got in the hot tub and it felt so good to just relax there. This is what weekends were made for and now that the snow has melted off of the mountain roads the fun can really begin.

The World is Flat

The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman explains many of the changes that the world is going through as a result of globalization in the 21st century. The world is changing so fast I don't think Mr. Friedman can even keep up with it in his book. Markets are changing at such a rapid pace it's only the businesses capable of adapting that will succeed in this new global marketplace. We see this with Microsoft needing to buy Yahoo in order to maintain competitive with Google in online ad-based revenue. Outsourcing is a wake up call for people in America that have been dependent on the same old business practices for such a long time. In order to stay on top of all of this innovation we need to continue to invest in education.

Open source software is changing the way businesses work. People are only beginning to realize that media, software and new technology can't be locked down to the point where users have to pay a fee every time they want access to it. Companies like Microsoft have benefited from piracy in that it has given their software a greater share of the market. There are also some serious drawbacks for businesses in a flat world. If a company doesn't stay on top of the latest innovations in its' area of business in many cases the entire company can be replaced by a cheaper version of itself. We see this happening in China all the time. A company will set up business there to sell products to the developed western countries. A cheap clone company will set up right next to it to reverse engineer their product and do business with the developing countries where patent and trademark laws are less stringent. This simply follows rule #1 of what companies live by, "When the world is flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is whether it will be done by you or to you."

I enjoyed reading the book and it gives a taste of what to expect with business in the 21st century. I think it's important not to get all caught up in what's the newest thing in technology and to let it take over our lives. Outsourcing is usually beneficial to the countries in which it takes place. For example the Harvard students that started a business in Cambodia provided jobs that are twice the minimum wage there as well as scholarships and an opportunity to learn English. No matter how much the way of doing business changes the basic necessities in life will always be the same like food, shelter and having meaningful relationships.

Apple Sued Over iTunes Technology

Yahoo news has an article about Apple being sued over iTunes technology. ZapMedia applied for two patents back in 1999 that were just recently granted. The patents cover a way of sending content from servers to media players over the internet. There are some things that are so obvious they shouldn't be allowed to be patented and this sounds like just one of those cases. Even though ZapMedia may have worked with Apple before the iPod was released this idea of distributing media over the internet couldn't have been their original idea. The internet has been around longer than that and people have been selling media online from its' beginnings.

Women in Computer Science

Paul De Palma in his article "Why Women Avoid Computer Science" published in the June 2001 issue of Communications of the ACM gives some suggestions for what can be done to get more women interested in studying computer science. When the article was written women were only earning 28% of the undergraduate degrees in that major. The author explains how computer science is in many ways similar to mathematics, an area of study pursued by nearly an equal number of men and women. He argues that university computer science programs need to emulate what their fellow math programs have done right in order to attract more women. The author points out that the student of mathematics relies mainly on drill and repetition of similar problems in order to gain proficiency. Another important similarity between math and CS that was left out in the article is that algorithms analysis in computer science and math proofs are both focused mainly on problem solving. Computer science is applied mathematics where theories are put into practice to get out a program that performs a given task. Computer science also involves the learning of many different languages. Problem solving and learning languages are both areas in which women are equal if not better at than men. I think the main reason fewer women choose to study computer science is based on past perceptions. There is really no reason as far as I can tell that more women don't get involved in computer science.